Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire

If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that nothing can trigger a snap UN Security Council meeting or an US military intervention like reports of a WMD in the Middle East.

Yesterday, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) sprung into action following images and a statement which were posted by Mustafa Bali, a spokesperson for the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) of ‘chemical weapons’ being deployed by the Turkish forces against Kurdish civilians in northern Syria.

After 8 days of fierce resistance by our fighters against heavy ground and aerial attacks of Turkey in Serêkaniyê, we suspect that unconventional weapons are used against SDF fighters upon the reports and signs we receive from the besieged town. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/Epr1BsDFhC

— Mustafa Bali (@mustefabali) October 16, 2019

Defense Post explain the media trajectory of this story which began to cascade across western media from Wednesday:

“Bali’s accusations came after the SDF-aligned AHNA news agency on Wednesday, Foreign Policy on Thursday, and The Times of London on Friday reported children were being treated for severe abnormal burns. The Times report said the “terrible wounds” suggest Turkey “is using white phosphorus against Kurdish civilians,” while ANHA accused Turkey of using “internationally prohibited phosphorus.”

It was the article by Foreign Policy Magazine (part of the Bezos media empire) which triggered a UN investigation into the claims, by Foreign Policy’s editors were adamant to place the blame squarely on “Turkish proxies,” namely, the former jihadist paramilitary legion formerly known as the Free Syrian Army (recently rebranded as the “Syrian National Army” by the Syrian opposition in exile).

The complaint has now made its way to the Hague. In a statement made yesterday to Newsweek, the OPCW said the following:

“The OPCW is aware of the situation in northern Syria and is collecting information at OPCW Headquarters with regard to the alleged use of chemical weapons.”

“So far, the OPCW has not yet determined the credibility of these allegations.”

If chemical weapons are seen to have been used against civilians in Syria, then the current conflict could immediately be escalated, at least in the near term, to become a top agenda item for the international community and could prompt more physical involvement of western military in that theatre, in much the same way that ISIS would provoke a renewed imperative should they magically surface around Syria’s much-coveted oil fields again. Past events in Syria have demonstrated that even the perception of a ‘chemical attack’ is enough to trigger western military action.

Needless to say, when you combine the words ‘Kurds’ and ‘chemical weapons’ it evokes images of Halabja, Iraq in 1988. But what is being presented here is not allegations of sarin, mustard gas, or even chlorine – all of which we’ve heard about in the Syrian conflict theatre since 2013.

The question still remains whether or not these claims are in fact credible, or whether Kurdish militants have learned to play the WMD game in Syria. Past dubious claims by the Syrian opposition forces and their White Helmets adjuncts – of chemical weapons use by ‘the regime’ in Syria have not furthered the cause of truth and justice on the matter, not least of all after Western and Gulf state-backed terrorists and White Helmets were caught staging a fake ‘chemical attack’ in the Damascus suburb of Douma in 2018, along with numerous other fabricated incidents specifically designed to elicit western military intervention in Syria. The official narrative of a ‘Sarin and Chlorine attack in Douma’ completely collapsed following the release of a leaked OPCW whistleblower’s engineering report which was intentionally omitted from the main Fact Finding Mission because it cast serious doubt on western-backed ‘rebel’ and White Helmet claims that chlorine cylinders were dropped by ‘the regime’ from helicopters on to an apartment block before killing over one hundred civilians by chlorine asphyxiation.

By the same token, jihadist FSA rebels do have previous form using chemical weapons in the field, and have been the recipient of billions of dollars in US weaponry since 2012, some of which could easily include white phosphorus munitions. The same could also be said for Israel’s own supplying of ‘rebel’ fighters in Syria – a practice which is already well-documented by now.

White Phosphorus: Made in the USA

Over the years, the international community has only marginally, if at all, seriously reacted to similar reports of white phosphorus use in conflict zones around the world, probably because the culprits have been the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

US military use of white phosphorus is legendary, most notably during its Siege of Fallulja in Iraq in 2004, and later in Afghanistan, but also more recently in 2017 in during its aerial bombardments against ISIS in Raqqa, Syria, and in Mosul, Iraq.

Israel has repeatedly used white phosphorus over densely-populated areas during is many incursions into Gaza, a practice which drew accusations of war crimes in 2009. This forced Tel Aviv to announce that it would be removing the chemical agent from its arsenal in 2013, although reports continued to surface of its use by the IDF. Still, hardly a rebuke was ever issued in the western media.

In its illegal undeclared war of aggression against its neighbour Yemen, Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly cited by international groups for using US-supplied white phosphorus against Yemenis. When pressed on the matter, US officials did confirm they had indeed supplied the Saudi military with white phosphorus, but refused to admit how much was supplied and when.

Technically, white phosphorus has legal battlefield applications – as a marker, or as a smoke screen to conceal troop movements, and therefore the substance is not banned under international chemical weapons conventions, such as Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. However, its use is strictly proscribed to avoid its use against people, or “in close proximity to civilians” or against civilian property. Traditionally, the US military has been able to circumvent these regulations by stating that they had given civilians ample time to evacuate in advance of an artillery assault on a own or city.

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Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting in the Middle East including work in Syria and Iraq.

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